In the late summer of 2000, Paul Glastris gave me a guided tour of the West Wing and the Old Executive Office Building. Bill Clinton wasn’t there that day. But it was still one of the cooler experiences of my life. I’m still grateful. Glastris has a big new piece up about where Obama stands today among the great presidents and where he might stand in the history books depending on whether he wins or loses reelection. It’s a great piece that is, if anything, too short. But his conclusion is about the same as mine. If given an opportunity to consolidate his achievements, and if he doesn’t commit some major error like Iran-Contra, Watergate, or LewinskyGate, Obama will be in the very top echelon of presidents. One point that Glastris made was quite impressive, and it hadn’t occurred to me. What if Obama’s greatest weakness is also the source, ultimately, of his greatest strength?

Even if his caution has led to achievements that are less sweeping than they might have been, that same character trait might also explain why none of Obama’s decisions has, so far, led to a calamitous outcome. This is no small feat, especially in a time of multiple world-historical emergencies. Indeed, some of our greatest presidents did not manage to avoid such self-inflicted disasters. The sainted George Washington, in an effort to retire Revolutionary War debt, chose to tax whiskey, and sparked a bloody insurgency, the Whiskey Rebellion. Thomas Jefferson, hoping to punish European powers for harassing American merchant vessels, put a stop to all marine trade in and out of American ports, and succeeded only in causing a national recession. FDR, too, precipitated a recession when he slashed budgets in 1936; he also interned the Japanese and tried to pack the courts. Ronald Reagan traded arms for hostages. Obama may well make similar kinds of grave mistakes in the future, but so far, as best we can tell, he has not made any.

The view that Barack Obama is overly cautious must also take into account the many times in his presidency when he took extraordinary risks. He did so when he turned down Detroit’s first bailout request, demanding more concessions, including government ownership and the resignation of GM’s CEO, before saying yes. He did so when, after passing the stimulus, he made health care reform his number one legislative priority, against the advice of some of his top political advisers; and when, after Scott Brown’s victory in the Massachusetts Senate race, he chose to jam the health care bill through reconciliation despite cries of outrage from the GOP. And he did so, most famously, when he chose to send special forces into Pakistan to go after Osama bin Laden, without certainty that the terrorist leader was even there, with his senior national security advisers waffling, and with the clear understanding that if the mission went wrong, as a similar one did under Jimmy Carter, it could ruin his presidency.

It should be clear by now that I don’t believe that Obama’s record has been crippled by an excess of caution. Indeed, his last-minute decision to order extra helicopters into the bin Laden raid illustrates that daring and caution are compatible virtues, and he has a winning mix of both. It should also be clear that, on the strength of his record so far, I think he’s likely to be considered a great or near- great president.

Here’s one more thing to think about, related to Geithner’s Plan:

The politics of the plan were dreadful. It looked like more mollycoddling of Wall Street. But, as Joshua Green noted in the Atlantic, it had the desired effect. Private money, $140 billion of it, flooded into the nineteen biggest banks; the lending markets unfroze; and, with the help of low interest rates from the Fed, the banks paid back the TARP funds, with interest. In 2008, the International Monetary Fund studied past financial crises in forty-two countries and found that their governments spent, on average, 13.3 percent of GDP to resolve them. By that measure, it would have cost the U.S. government $1.9 trillion. The Obama plan got the banks back on their feet at essentially zero cost to the government, and in historically near-record time. Let that sink in.

I don’t share Glastris’s enthusiasm for Race to the Top, but aside from that, I could have written most of this piece myself. There is, however, a dark side that isn’t mentioned. And that is Obama’s record on civil liberties and the War or Terror. If he is going to have a black mark to match Washington, FDR, and LBJ, his consolidation of Bush’s national security state and his failure to punish the torturers will be the prime candidates.

Still, read the piece. It’s worth your time.